the subject, show by their definitions of the word how uncertain is
its connotation.[2] It is therefore necessary that I should make clear
at the outset what I understand by the term, and what aspects of
religious life and thought I intend to deal with in these Lectures.

The history of the _word_ begins in close connexion with the Greek
mysteries.[3] A mystic [Greek: mystês] is one who has been, or is
being, initiated into some esoteric knowledge of Divine things, about
which he must keep his mouth shut ([Greek: myein]); or, possibly, he is
one whose _eyes_ are still shut, one who is not yet an [Greek:
epoptês].[4] The word was taken over, with other technical terms of
the mysteries, by the Neoplatonists, who found in the existing
mysteriosophy a discipline, worship, and rule of life congenial to
their speculative views. But as the tendency towards quietism and
introspection increased among them, another derivation for "Mysticism"
was found--it was explained to mean deliberately shutting the eyes to
all external things.[5] We shall see in the sequel how this later
Neoplatonism passed almost entire into Christianity, and, while
forming the basis of mediæval Mysticism, caused a false association to
cling to the word even down to the Reformation.[6]

The phase of thought or feeling which we call Mysticism has its
origin in that which is the raw material of all religion, and perhaps
of all philosophy and art as well, namely, that dim consciousness of
the _beyond_, which is part of our nature as human beings. Men have
given different names to these "obstinate questionings of sense and
outward things." We may call them, if we will, a sort of higher
instinct, perhaps an anticipation of the evolutionary process; or an
extension of the frontier of consciousness; or, in religious language,
the voice of God speaking to us. Mysticism arises when we try to bring